Bungie apologizes for Destiny 2 item that resembles neo-Nazi flag

Dev insists that apparent “Kekistan” logo in game “does NOT represent our values.”

Bungie, the designers behind last week's massive game Destiny 2, publicly acknowledged and apologized on Tuesday for what is a bizarre coincidence at best and a troubling decision at worst: the use of a prominent neo-Nazi flag symbol in the game.

"It's come to our attention that a gauntlet [an armor item] in Destiny 2 shares elements with a hate symbol," Bungie wrote on its official Twitter channel. "We are removing it. Our deepest apologies. We renounce [sic] hate in all forms."

Enlarge/ The design of the "Kekistan" flag, which looks similar to an image on Destiny 2's official site.

The item in question, which was still live on the game's official site as of press time, is a piece of arm-and-shoulder armor named "Road Complex AA1." Its lime-green color and iconography, with solid lines offset by opposite-facing letter K shapes, look quite similar to elements on a flag for a fictitious nation dubbed "Kekistan." The full flag design, which has flown at recent neo-Nazi rallies across the United States, looks very similar to a German Nazi flag. Differences include the color swap to lime green and a mix of Ks and lines instead of a swastika. (The flag also commonly includes 4chan's heart-shaped logo.)

Further Reading

The Destiny 2 item's similarity to the Kekistan flag follows many other neo-Nazi campaigns to sneak white nationalist iconography into pop culture—in ways that could be explained away or excused, no less. Bungie is already scrambling to clear its name: "This does NOT represent our values, and we are working quickly to correct this," the company wrote on Twitter. Whether or not the symbol was intentional, the Internet's biggest hate campaigners can already claim "top kek" and/or social-media points for the icon's sharing.

I reviewed Zoe Quinn's new book Crash Override at Ars yesterday, and it dedicates many pages to the rise of "gamification" in online hate campaigns. Quinn points to meme-driven popularity campaigns as ways to enlist bored, disenfranchised people into joining up and dehumanizing their targets. While Bungie deserves credit for soundly denouncing any hate-campaign affiliations, it may need to do more work to offset the Internet collateral damage that has already been done.

The game came out on Wednesday. This is basically a non-issue, normal people aren't up on nazi-troll iconography. When you are trying to make simple graphical symbols, it's basically impossible to not run into ones that have been used before.

The game came out on Wednesday. This is basically a non-issue, normal people aren't up on nazi-troll iconography. When you are trying to make simple graphical symbols, it's basically impossible to not run into ones that have been used before.

It's a non-issue in that they are responding appropriately and in a timely manner.

It's a big issue for them in that they must figure out how it slipped in to the game in the first place. A non neo-Nazi can be excused for not recognized the symbol as a neo-Nazi symbol, but the similarity is quite obviously not a coincidence. Who put it there? Do they have a neo-Nazi working for them and attempting to add neo-Nazi symbols to their image? That is something they need to find out.

I spend a fair amount of time online (probably a bit too much, honestly), and I'd never heard of this particular bit of symbology. I am perfectly willing to believe that no one at Bungie had ever heard of it either. Given that, the fact that they went "ah, oops, our bad" and removed it as soon as they found out is everything I would have asked of them.

The game came out on Wednesday. This is basically a non-issue, normal people aren't up on nazi-troll iconography. When you are trying to make simple graphical symbols, it's basically impossible to not run into ones that have been used before.

Even even ones that are vaguely like ones used before, even if they're completely different (4 lines instead of 3, white instead of black, not square, etc.)

While a single neo-nazi artist at Bungie could sneak this in as it is a pretty esoteric reference, I am more than willing to bet that more than one member of the team was in on the joke. Maybe it's one bad apple, maybe Bungie needs to take a hard look at their studio culture to figure out how to prevent their products being used as hate speech.

Looks very very bad for Bungie from a PR perspective at any rate, and I fully expect they will take the artist to task over it.

Seems like a tenuous connection at best. Are they going to remove everything that ever becomes in some tangential way associated with right wing politics? This seems like one of those things someone got outraged over just because they went too long without any rageahol.

It wasn't so long ago that I would have responded "well obviously it's a coincidence, and it's not a particularly unique or specific symbol, somebody just inadvertently recreated something that lives underneath the Stormfrontian rock".

The game came out on Wednesday. This is basically a non-issue, normal people aren't up on nazi-troll iconography. When you are trying to make simple graphical symbols, it's basically impossible to not run into ones that have been used before.

Is it? Just how did it make it into the game in the first place? That isn't a design that just happens to look similar, that is the kek flag design. It was intentionally placed.

While single neo-nazi artist at Bungie could sneak this in as it is a pretty esoteric reference, I am more than willing to bet that more than one member of the team was in on the joke. Maybe it's one bad apple, maybe Bungie needs to take a hard look at their studio culture to figure out how to prevent their products being used as hate speech.

Looks very very bad for Bungie from a PR perspective at any rate, and I fully expect they will take the artist to task over it.

What is amazing to me is how many of these people are in the gaming comunity. It's making it so I can't go places on the net where there are large amounts of gamers. It's not the group I think of when I think of skinheads but I haven't really talked to any neo-nazis since I was in high school back at the end of the 80s.

Over/under on the number of irony-blind folks who whine and moan about a publisher making their own damn choice about what iconography they do or don't want in their game? Almost as if such removal hurts their feelings or makes them sad? Sounding, oh I don't know what's the worst, over-sensitive?

Over/under on the number of irony-blind folks who whine and moan about a publisher making their own damn choice about what iconography they do or don't want in their game? Almost as if such removal hurts their feelings or makes them sad? Sounding, oh I don't know what's the worst, over-sensitive?

Yeah, the folks that whine about "SJWs" and the like tend to bitch a whole hell of a lot more than any of the people they attempt to troll.

Honestly, considering how many skins and items make it into a big game like this, and how many games of similar stature never happened to accidentally make something like this, I personally wouldn't be entirely surprised about this being entirely inadvertent. There's a somewhat limited number of logos you can make off of the basics of straight letters and lines.

We spent far too long on the "Over the shoulder" pose in Overwatch, let's not spend nearly as long on this one.

While single neo-nazi artist at Bungie could sneak this in as it is a pretty esoteric reference, I am more than willing to bet that more than one member of the team was in on the joke. Maybe it's one bad apple, maybe Bungie needs to take a hard look at their studio culture to figure out how to prevent their products being used as hate speech.

Looks very very bad for Bungie from a PR perspective at any rate, and I fully expect they will take the artist to task over it.

What is amazing to me is how many of these people are in the gaming comunity. It's making it so I can't go places on the net where there are large amounts of gamers. It's not the group I think of when I think of skinheads but I haven't really talked to any neo-nazis since I was in high school back at the end of the 80s.

Just like 80s punk culture, the neo-nazis have infiltrated meme/gaming culture to spread their shit propaganda. Seemed innocent at first until you realize just how massive an organized campaign of hate exists. Look at this thread (or better the Crash Override one from yesterday) as an anecdotal example, all manor of neo-nazi alt-right facist scum come out of the woodwork to defend fucking kekistan memes ffs.

Over/under on the number of irony-blind folks who whine and moan about a publisher making their own damn choice about what iconography they do or don't want in their game? Almost as if such removal hurts their feelings or makes them sad? Sounding, oh I don't know what's the worst, over-sensitive?

Yeah, the folks that whine about "SJWs" and the like tend to bitch a whole hell of a lot more than any of the people they attempt to troll.

[citation needed]

just google "sjw" for any info you need to be proven wrong, its a fear monger culture that shuts down conversation and desires domination and social control

The game came out on Wednesday. This is basically a non-issue, normal people aren't up on nazi-troll iconography. When you are trying to make simple graphical symbols, it's basically impossible to not run into ones that have been used before.

Its inclusion in the game was probably due to ignorance, but graphic designers are not making Nazi flags by accident. Monkeys also aren't writing Shakespeare on typewriters.